Re: Why is Windows install ScanDisk lying about an error on my HDD?

Posted on 2019-10-17, 10:31

by

by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What software are you using to partition the drive? I find fdisk is best. yes it's not very smart but either is windows so at least you know windows will understand the disk layout. With disks larger then 64GB you need either fdisk included with WinME or the updated Win98 version(which is getting …

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Re: Ess es1868f or Soundblaster awe64 value ct4380

Posted on 2019-10-17, 10:11

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Nah questions are good, we all have to start at some point. So the quick and dirty history of dos game music. - First you had PS speaker, which is... your internal PC speaker - Then you had Adlib, this is done by a Yamaha OPL chip or clone of said chip that is on your sound card. - Next came MT32, …

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Re: Dell Studio XPS 9100 project maybe?

Posted on 2019-10-17, 09:29

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Agreed, I'm in the market for a LGA-1366 system but prices haven't dropped enough yet. They may be in the old category but not obsolete. I'm hoping when Win7 goes EOL next year kill's the value of this era hardware.

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Re: storage of vintage hardware

Posted on 2019-10-17, 09:21

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Store them like you would a gun. Bit extreme, I wouldn't trust my kids messing round with my pc's ;) As everyone has said if you can control the extremes then great. I've got a bit too much to do that. For hardware I thinks valuable or fragile I keep in a container in my house, not ideal but at …

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Re: Conserving Dallas RTC chips

Posted on 2019-10-17, 09:05

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

interesting! My very first PC from 95 still has it's original Dallas chip working well, and not really looking forward to the day I need to do the coin battery hack. If this puts that job off for another year or so I'm a happy chappy

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Re: Ess es1868f or Soundblaster awe64 value ct4380

Posted on 2019-10-17, 08:56

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I wouldn't worry about using the sound cards IDE if you have spare on your controller, you need to start messing around with special drivers. You don't need any "special" drivers to use the IDE port on a sound card. It's just an ordinary secondary/tertiary IDE channel. Just jumper the CF card as …

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Re: Ess es1868f or Soundblaster awe64 value ct4380

Posted on 2019-10-16, 15:16

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The big difference will be with music in games (usually something with the word Midi or Roland in the setup menu) Doom been a classic example. If you go on youtube and search Creative AWE64 and Dreamblaster X2 you'll find examples of both. have a listen and decide which you prefer. Lesser …

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Re: "Fat Face" Compaq Presario: why?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 14:59

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

SirNickity wrote: Any extraneous plastic bulbousness in front of a 3.5" floppy drive is an immediate "nope" on my case selection list. I can't stand drive labia. I remember when it first came in and thought it was stupid. I never knew its technical name till now though!

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Re: The risks of using period correct power supplies

Posted on 2019-10-16, 13:36

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Can't hurt to open up the other PSU's and check. I've stopped using old ATX PSU's since getting back into retro PC's. All new builds use the same brand modular power supplies, that way I can use the spare molex cables from my sata based pc's in my ide based systems and not have a bunch of "useless" …

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Re: Voodoo Card(s) in a fast Pentium 3 machine - Necessary/Worth it?

Posted on 2019-10-16, 13:25

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you still have the Voodoo 3? Only advantage a V2 SLI has over a V3 is you could pair it with the GF4 and have best of both worlds (Glide and D3D) in 1 PC And if the V3 is PCI you can do what I did and pair it with the 4600 as a second graphics card in the same PC. I set it up as a duel screen PC …

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Re: Ideas for my best windows 98se build

Posted on 2019-10-16, 11:09

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

More then brand is bad caps as this is from the cap plague era. Asus were one of the better consumer brands at the time but still not immune, no on was. GPU memory, 128mb is fine, 256 is where things may start to get interesting. If it was me I'd probably go with a GeForce FX, easier to find the 4 …

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Re: HP Z400 Video issue

Posted on 2019-10-16, 10:25

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No problem, recently dragged one out of retirement at work as a 2nd rendering PC, crappy Quadro NVS 295 but 32GB ram. It just sits in the background crunching away. Was impressed with the design, nice little machines, needs a 2nd socket though 😉

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Re: Yamaha PCI & AWE64 ISA, Pentium 166mmx Socket 7

Posted on 2019-10-16, 10:04

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm by no means a Glide expert either, only got my first 3dfx card in 2012 and only got my Banchee last year but haven't got around to trying it out myself yet. In real basic terms the Banshee is just a Voodoo 2 with multitexturing disabled but faster clock speed, so single texture games will be …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2019-10-16, 08:42

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Guy posted on FB group (about vintage synths) he wants to give away this thing - nobody wanted it, and when I noticed his post it was already too late because he throwed it away... but when I contacted him he recovered it from the dumpster and I picked it up today... I have some Audigy cards but …

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Re: Choosing 1 retro platform for games that just don't run well on modern hardware?

Posted on 2019-10-15, 16:40

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd prefer transferring files over Ethernet then USB any day of the week, but I guess USB is more flexible, as you say you can always do Ethernet over USB. Not much will happen if you plug a usb drive into a Ethernet port :P If you don't plan on any more builds I'd use the Audigy 2 ZS, drivers are …

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Re: Intel vs AMD?

Posted on 2019-10-15, 16:23

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My Slot A M/B is the FIC SD11 (AMD-751 + VIA 686A) and it felt like my BX based system back in the late 90's, that is unrefined. It did feel like AMD abandoned slot A much earlier and drivers never reached the maturity/reliability of intels' BX. The BX chipset is such a tried and tested chipset it's …

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Re: HP Z400 Video issue

Posted on 2019-10-15, 12:02

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe if you try a card that's more closer related to a officially supported card. These are the cards officially supported by HP NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295 256MB PCIe Graphics Card NVIDIA NVS 300 512MB Graphics NVIDIA Quadro NVS 450 512MB Graphics NVIDIA Quadro 400 512MB Graphics NVIDIA Quadro 600 1GB …

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Re: DooM

Posted on 2019-10-15, 10:52

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Thats one hell of a 386

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Re: Choosing 1 retro platform for games that just don't run well on modern hardware?

Posted on 2019-10-15, 10:44

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You know, maybe I'm just voicing out old misconceptions and some so-so experience I've had with Win2k myself, ages ago. For most Windows games it may be fine, although 9x may have a slight edge on compatibility. DOS games will typically not work well (in particular, sound is hard to get to work …

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Re: Best CDR and CDRW burner software for Windows 98?

Posted on 2019-10-15, 10:23

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by chinny22

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

If your after period correct, Easy CD and Nero were the big 2 in the day, in the end I also preferred Nero 5x. Don't do much burning anymore and when I do it's usually with imgburn on my XP rig, didn't even know it worked in 98!

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